Blood Family (16 page)

All the time we were singing, he was on his way back to his house, swinging his bright umbrella. He checked the stick insect inside the jar (‘About the easiest pet you can keep.’) and stroked Sooty-Sue while he kept chatting about other animals. Then he put on his jacket and picked up his umbrella again. ‘It’s
still
raining! Never mind. I have a good feeling that it’ll be much sunnier next time we meet. I’ll see you then, shall I?’

Again, I heard myself whispering, ‘Yes.’

He looked me full in the face. His eyes were twinkling – full of fun and love. ‘Goodbye,’ he said. ‘Try to be happy.’

‘Goodbye,’ I whispered. ‘Goodbye, Mr Perkins. Goodbye, Dad.’

I’ve no idea why it ate in to me so badly, the realization that Harris and I must be blood family. As Alice pointed out, pretty well everyone has a bad sheep or two among their relations somewhere, and even those like her who don’t know any details can’t bank on them not being there simply because of that. I’d seen enough on telly and in the newspapers to know that Harris wasn’t by any means the foulest person around. He was a bully and a drunk. He was a horrible man. He didn’t care about a single soul except himself. And he was violent.

But there are worse about.

It’s just I didn’t want to be anything to do with him – not simply in my day-to-day life, but in any way at all. He was the man who’d kicked my mother about, and beaten her simple, and I was desperate for there to be no link between us at all. Why should I want this monster muscling in and spoiling things in my mind when, from the start it seems, I had already chosen kind, gentle Mr Perkins as my real father?

And Eleanor Holdenbach must have realized that. Once, on my way back sooner than expected from the lavatory along from her office, I’d overheard her saying to Rob: ‘That Mr Perkins has been a life-saver.’ The memory stuck because I’d been surprised that she knew anything about Mr Perkins, apart from what I’d told her. She’d claimed she’d never watched his show, so how would she have known what I, who’d spent a thousand hours in his company, had never known – that he must once have rescued someone who was in desperate straits?

I hadn’t realized she’d been talking of me.

So perhaps, when things took such a nosedive after the visit to the university, I should have had the sense to ask to see her again. They’d always, all of them, kept saying through the years, ‘Edward, if ever you should feel the need to talk to someone . . .’ Always I’d tuned out at once. Bleh, bleh. Bleh, bleh. And why should I have felt the need? I had been happy enough.

But now I found things going wrong.
Haunted
was what I felt. Between me and whatever I was looking at – a set of questions in a school test, something on television, even a soaring football – Harris’s face would suddenly appear. Sometimes his look was threatening. Sometimes he wore that smirk I knew so well, or that grim look of concentration that used to spread across his face whenever he hurled me aside and set about my mum.

‘Edward? Edward Stead, are you paying attention?’

Each teacher in turn lost patience. But how could I explain, without letting on who I’d once been, and who I dreaded to be? Nicholas begged me, ‘What is the
matter
, Edward? The school’s at its wits’ end with you this term. What’s on your mind?’

I couldn’t tell him either, though for the life of me I don’t know why. So on I struggled, restless and nervous, lying awake at nights and snapping at everyone. Time and again, I saw Natasha seek out Nicholas’s eyes across the supper table. ‘
You
deal with him,’ her face said, plain as paint. ‘I’ve had enough.’

Alice stopped teasing me – a sure sign that our partnership was under strain. Sometimes I caught her watching me, a worried look on her face. And then one evening, after a meal studded with Natasha’s increasingly irritated scoldings, Nicholas’s tired pleas and my unhelpful snarls, she came into my room.

I didn’t make things easy. ‘What do
you
want?’

‘Now, now! Miss Manners wouldn’t think that was a very nice welcome.’

‘Just push off, Alice.’

‘No. I want to talk to you.’

‘Well, I don’t want to talk to you.’

She made a face. ‘So tell me something new. You don’t want to talk to
anyone
.’

‘No, I don’t.’ I thought of adding, ‘Especially not to you.’ But even to me, that sounded far too childish.

By now she’d hitched up her school skirt and slid
herself onto my table. She threw one leg across the other as if she knew that such a grown-up, feminine pose would stop me trying to manhandle her out of the room the way I might have done before. ‘What has got into you, Eddie? You’re being horrible to everyone.’

‘I’m all right so long as everyone leaves me alone.’

‘You’re not, though. You’re a mess. And Justin says that all your teachers think you’re going to fail your exams.’

‘It’s none of Justin’s business. Or yours.’

Now she was leaning forward. ‘But it
is
, though, isn’t it? Because all this is my fault. It was me who started you off.’

‘Started me off?’

‘With the bluey.’

‘The bluey?’

‘Yes. That was the first you’d had, wasn’t it?’

Now I remembered. She was talking of the pill she’d given me so many weeks before.

She’d started up again. ‘And now you’re clearly on to something else. So it’s my fault. I shouldn’t ever have given you anything that night. I feel so
guilty
. I don’t know what you’re on, or where you’re getting it. But it’s not doing you any good and I think you should stop.’ Her cheeks were pink now. ‘In fact, I think that you should probably stop trying to deal with all this in your own screwed-up head. You ought to go downstairs right now and ask to talk to Nicholas on his own, and tell him all
about that stupid Bryce Harris computer picture, and what’s been happening.’

‘
Nothing’s
been happening!’

‘Come off it, Eddie! Anyone in the world could look at you and know you’re taking something!’

‘I’m
not
!’

‘That’s almost proof.’ Her voice brimmed with pure scorn. ‘All druggies lie through their teeth.’

‘I’m not a druggie!’

Alice raised her palms. ‘OK, OK! You’re not a druggie. I believe you. Honestly I do.’

It was the sheer contempt with which she said it that made me spring across to tug her hair so hard I pulled her off the table. She stumbled to her feet, then turned, eyes glittering with tears of pain.

‘Oh,
right
!’ she said. ‘Who did you learn that nasty trick from, Eddie? Could it have been your very own real dad,
Bryce Harris
?’

She told, of course. Oh, not about the hair-pulling or what she thought was going on with drugs. She doubled back from school the very next morning, missing her favourite lessons, in order to tell Nicholas about my visit to the university, and what I’d said about the face on the computer. ‘That’s why he’s like he is. He thinks that he’ll turn into Harris.’

Nicholas reported all this back to me, along with a stern lecture about the fact that I was not to pick on Alice
for breaking a confidence. She’d done what she thought best, and he would hope that if my sister ever found herself in the same state, I’d do the same for her.

I knew exactly what he meant. I also knew I would. If Alice had been halfway as messed up and miserable as I was, I would have rushed to get his help.

But somehow I couldn’t say that. I couldn’t say a single thing that was normal or sensible. All I could do was snarl, ‘I am not “in a state”. I just want to be left
alone
.’

‘Oh, come on, Edward. That man has spoiled enough of other people’s lives. And more than enough of yours. Here you were, doing beautifully. Everyone said so. Everyone was astonished at how well you’ve been managing over the years. This is a setback, I admit. We’ll have to face it.’ He sank down on my bed. ‘First, of course, we will need the facts.’

‘Oh, yes?’ I said sarcastically. ‘Track Harris down and ask him if he’d mind taking a DNA test?’

Nicholas seemed surprised I’d thought even this far along the path. How could he know that every living minute of mine had been chewed up with thoughts of how I could find out the truth.
Was
Harris my father? Or was he merely an uncle or a cousin of some sort? Maybe it was pure coincidence that we looked alike. After all, everyone in the world has types they fancy. Perhaps my mother had always been attracted to men with Harris’s build and facial features?

Maybe I was the child of one of them, not him.

Nicholas ran his fingers through his thinning hair. ‘Natasha and I are going to have to think about all this. And maybe talk to Rob.’

‘Throw them all in,’ I said sarcastically. ‘Don’t forget that policewoman Sue, and Eleanor Holdenbach. And maybe that nurse who cut my toenails at the hospital. And of course Linda and Alan.’

‘All people who
care
about you! And it’s quite a list!’

I should have felt ashamed. I think I did. But not enough to draw back and apologize. I was in
pain
. I didn’t know what to do or what to say, and all the time my brain was spinning with the misery of having even the shadow of bloody Harris looming over me.

Perhaps for ever.

I got so near to begging Nicholas to send me back to Eleanor Holdenbach. She would have understood. But then I suddenly remembered all the questions – how they had driven me so close to crazy, on and on and on. First Rob, then Sue, then Eleanor. Questions and questions and questions. Over and over and over.

I couldn’t bear to think of going through all that again.

Nicholas was clearly waiting for me to say something. But I stared at the floor. I couldn’t think of anything that might help him feel better. I couldn’t think of anything to help myself.

In the end, sighing, Nicholas pushed his hands down on his knees to lever himself up from the bed. ‘I see we’re
going to get nowhere tonight. Let’s leave it, Edward. We will have time to think about what’s best for you, and you’ll have time to think about what you want too.’

His hand came down on my shoulder. ‘I am so sorry that this happened. It was such bad luck. If they had only chosen someone else to photograph!’

Did he believe I hadn’t thought of that? That I’d not thrashed around in bed, exhausted with the effort of telling myself, ‘That’s all you have to do. Pretend that it was someone else Stefania chose when she picked up the camera. Tina, or Martin, or Justin. Anyone. It didn’t have to be you. So just pretend it wasn’t. Put it out of your mind. Then you can go on just the way you were before. After all, nothing has changed. So what’s the point in letting these weird thoughts chew you up all day, all night? Let them go, Eddie! Let them go! Forget the whole damn thing!’

On and on. Telling myself all night. Most of the day.

And always hopeless. Absolutely hopeless. The thing is, I’d begun to see him everywhere. My heart would thump. I would creep up to sneak a look and ask myself afterwards, ‘How could I even have
begun to think
that could be him?’ I’d realize that it was because the man was wearing the same sort of jacket Harris did, or had his knuckles clenched. Something as simple as that.

And now I knew that I was going to look like him.

I had proof too. One dark December evening, Natasha sent me on the bus to pick up something she had left at
work. Just papers, but she needed them and Malcolm was working in the office until late.

Some great fat woman took the seat beside me. There were some places free, but she was probably too heavy on her feet to bother moving further along the bus. She squashed me up against the window frame. I can remember what was in my mind. I sat there wondering if she had children who were dead embarrassed when she came waddling into school. In fact, I can remember feeling lucky my own mum was so hidden away.

And then this woman shifted in her seat. I had a horror she was going to talk to me, and anyone who got on at the following stops might think we were together. So I turned away.

Harris was gazing at me.

I couldn’t budge. I was wedged in. In any case, I realized instantly he wasn’t there – that it was only my own face warped to look strained and old, the way that faces do when they’re reflected in bus windows in the dark and wet.

Still, it was Harris again.

We did our best. And after all, it wasn’t as if we didn’t know what was the matter with him. Alice astonished me by taking charge of one part of the problem. Without a
word to me, she engineered things so that Edward left his mother’s room in Ivy House to fetch a cake she claimed was in the car. (He never hurried back from any errand that could get him out of there for a few minutes.)

The moment Edward shut the door behind him, Alice asked Lucy outright:

‘Was Eddie
Bryce
’s baby?’

I held my breath, not even picking Alice up on her sheer bluntness. I knew she wasn’t usually that rude. She was just trying to raise the topic as quickly as she could, and make the question as clear as possible to that poor, addled brain.

Lucy looked so confused. I wasn’t sure if she’d been rattled by Alice’s ruthless tone, or didn’t know the answer. But suddenly I was
exasperated
with this pathetic woman who had let that great bully ruin my son’s life. So I pitched in as well. ‘Lucy,
is
Bryce Harris Eddie’s real father? Or was there someone else before him?’

She lowered her head, trying to duck the question. Her hair fell over her face. But I was fired up enough to say to her sharply, ‘Lucy!’ and it worked a treat. The tears leaked and she panicked, whispering, ‘Bryce said never to tell.’

I thought, if bullying
works
. . . ‘Why
not
?’

I barely caught a word of what she mumbled next. ‘. . . nobody’s business . . . couldn’t prove it . . . not stop his money when he left . . .’

(‘
When
he left’, you will notice. Not even ‘
if
’.)

‘Why? Had that happened to him before with other girlfriends – that people had gone after him for child support?’